Lawmakers hear loud cries for restored funding

AUSTIN — For Republican members of the Texas Legislature, life is easy this year, at least compared to the 2011 session, when they dealt with what widely was believed to be a $27 billion shortfall.

Having more money than expected has made a big difference. Yet this doesn’t mean the perennial demands for more funding have faded.

On the contrary, seven weeks after State Comptroller Susan Combs predicted the Legislature would have a surplus of $8.8 billion from the current fiscal biennium ending Aug. 31, the lawmakers are hearing loud demands to restore massive budget cuts they made two years ago.

That’s not all. Since Combs’ biennial revenue estimate projects the state’s rainy day fund will grow from more than $8 billion this year to nearly $11.8 billion by the end of the 2014-15 fiscal biennium, there also are great expectations as to how the savings account should be used.

On Saturday, for example, a group named Save Our Schools held a rally outside the Capitol to demand the $5.4 billion funding cut to public education be restored. And last week, another group demanded the Legislature spend more on Medicaid and that Gov. Rick Perry and the lawmakers agree to the Medicaid expansion under the federal Affordable Care Act.

Legislators with a seat at the budget negotiations table are not surprised.

“Every agency and entity in the state of Texas would like to have the money back,” said Amarillo Republican Sen. Kel Seliger, a member of the Senate Finance Committee and chairman of the chamber’s Higher Education Committee.

But Seliger and other GOP legislators said though the state’s finances are not as bleak this year, there is only so much money to go around, especially when the Legislature has a long list of pressing needs like funding a 50-year water plan, transportation infrastructure and the ever-growing public school system.

For the water plan alone, Seliger has proposed withdrawing $1.6 billion from the Economic Stabilization Fund, the rainy day fund’s official name, to begin funding the $53 billion project, while Rep. Allan Ritter, R-Nederland, proposed withdrawing $2 billion for the same purpose.

Additionally, the chairmen of the budget-writing House Appropriations and Senate Finance panels recently said the Legislature might have to appropriate at least $3 billion for transportation infrastructure. And on Thursday, the House unanimously voted in favor of paying a $4.8 billion Medicaid bill due at the end of next month.

In short, the money is going fast, said Rep. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock.

“There is never going to be enough money to fill everybody’s wish list,” said Perry, who was recently appointed to the appropriations panel.

“The bottom line is, our elected role is to prioritize the budget and make those tough calls,” he said.

“But after going through the appropriations process for the last two weeks, I can tell you that the wish list is going to be longer than the availability ... I think you’ll see at the end of that process that we made the right calls.”

But the Democratic minority sees it differently.

“We have $8.8 billion of general revenue available to spend in fiscal year 2013,” San Antonio Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, the most vocal Democrat of the last two years, said.

“Some of these funds should be used to immediately begin restoring $5.4 billion in public education cuts,” said Martinez Fischer, who serves as Mexican American Legislative Caucus chairman.

“In light of a recent district court decision finding that Texas’ school finance system is broken and inadequate, we must act now to help our schools,” he added.

“The only thing political about having to restore funding to education is why we had an inaccurate revenue estimate by the comptroller in 2011, which forced Republicans to cut much more than necessary.”

Even groups and institutions that are strong supporters of Gov. Perry and the Legislature are making it clear that they would like to see some of the deep spending cuts restored.

“We suffered $67 million in cuts at Texas Tech and yet we added 2,000 students,” Chancellor Kent Hance said last week while in Austin for Texas Tech Day at the State Capitol.

“So, we would like that to be restored.”

Amarillo Republican Rep. Four Price, who also sits on the Appropriations panel, said he is aware of the growing demands for funding, but is cautiously optimistic some of the deep cuts of two years ago will be restored this session.

“We are in a very different environment with regard to our financial position,” Price said in comparison to the 2011 session.

“Our opportunities to fund many of the programs that could not be adequately funded two years ago are a reason to be optimistic.”